


Hurricane

by bartycrouchjrs



Category: Free!
Genre: Free! Dive to the Future, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 18:57:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19156978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bartycrouchjrs/pseuds/bartycrouchjrs
Summary: Once upon a time, Haru helped Rin to fall in love with swimming again, and now, Rin wants desperately to return the favor.





	Hurricane

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after season 3, episode 9.

It’s only once Rin steps foot in Tokyo that he truly understands the phrase ‘concrete jungle.’ The city is alive in every possible way: buildings reaching like tree trunks overhead, bodies buzzing around like flies, car horns shrieking like cicadas. It’s a wonder, he thinks, that someone like Sousuke, or Makoto, or _Haru_  could ever call this place home.

“It’s a lot, right?” Sousuke says, as Rin not-so-subtly braces himself for the walk over to his place.

“Yeah. Sorta makes Sydney look like a cakewalk,” Rin grouses, trying to hide just how much wants to jump out of his own skin. He’s been sheltered, spending all of his days in Tokyo thus far at the training facility with his coach—and now, at Sousuke’s place in the heart of the city, in close proximity to both the facility and the local university where Sousuke, Makoto, and Haru all study.

“Thanks for coming to pick me up, by the way,” Rin feels inclined to say a few blocks out, acutely grateful for the way that Sousuke has taken to walking slightly ahead of him. His broad shoulders clear a decent path for him as they cut through the crowds.

“No problem,” Sousuke replies easily.

By the time they reach his apartment, Rin is more exhausted than he’s been in all of his days of training combined. He kicks off his shoes in the entryway and leans against the door jamb, eyes scanning lazily over the room.

“Nice place,” he remarks. He takes in the sleek hardwood, the steel appliances, the pleasant cream color of the walls—the shoulder brace slung over the back of a chair.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sousuke drawls, already rounding the corner to the kitchen. Rin pads in after him a moment later to find him commandeering the coffee machine and yawning into one hand.

“Coffee, huh?” Rin ribs him, as Sousuke leisurely pulls two mugs from a nearby cabinet. Rin is struck, in that moment, by how nice it is to finally share the same space as his best friend again. “I take it pre-med is no joke, Sousuke?”

Sousuke huffs. “You’re not kidding.” He motions to one of the mugs and slants Rin a crooked smile. “You take yours with cream and sugar, right? Like a baby.”

“Oh, go to hell,” Rin tells him, but he’s grinning full-blown. Falling into old habits, a back and forth that feels as right as knees on a church floor. It’s as if nothing has changed.

Sousuke’s told him a little bit about his classes, but Rin is eager, more than anything, to see the campus—to see where his friends have been spending so much of their time these past few months. It’ll probably be another stressful excursion, if the university is anything like the rest of the city, yet Rin is still inexplicably struck with fascination by Tokyo at large. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it’ll soon be home to the 2020 Olympics; the promotion for the Games is already in full swing all around the city, with Olympic banners displayed on billboards and proudly occupying the windows of countless bars and restaurants. It’s Rin’s dream, come to life.

But, of course, it isn’t _only_  Rin’s dream. Rin’s competition has been anything but dwindling since he left for Australia; even without familiar faces like Sousuke or Makoto in the mix, his swimming career has been chockfull of friendly rivalry. Naturally, Natsuya springs to mind, with his cocky challenges and cheeky comments about _all the boys Rin wants to swim with_. After losing to him in a race one night, some hours after Natsuya had slurred into his ear at dinner, “You can practice racing me. Just pretend I’m Haruka,” and Rin had flushed bright red and made some hero-worshippy comment about Natsuya _wishing_  he could swim like Haru, Natsuya’s duffel bag had ended up on Rin’s living room floor and become a near-permanent fixture there. Rin supposes that’s partly on him, though, for making neither rent nor a move-out date a clear condition of Natsuya winning their bet and bunking up on Rin’s futon.

The company has been nice, though, which is why Rin is mostly okay with Natsuya taking advantage of him. Sydney is exhilarating, and vibrant, and so different from home—but, at times, it can also be unbearably lonely. Sydney has always represented to Rin something messy and complicated; it signifies a period in Rin’s life where he chased after his dreams, was the bravest he’d ever been, and was _still_  met with spectacular failure. Now, just as Rin chases the Olympics, he also aims to chase away the memories of his shortcomings.

Rin has never been effortless. He has always wanted too harshly, too ferociously. It’s one of the many reasons he’s always envied Haru, because Haru never seems to hunger for _anything_ , and Rin’s desires are eating him alive.

Where swimming is involved, Rin’s thoughts always seem to circle back around to Haru. As Sousuke presses the warm mug into his hand, even he seems to sense where Rin’s mind has wandered. Which, of course, is Sousuke’s cue to offhandedly remark, “I’m sure you’ve seen Nanase and the others already,” in that deliberate, drawling way of his.

Which means it’s also the perfect prelude for Rin’s guilt to surge up again like a tidal wave and drag him back out to sea. Of course, Sousuke’s comment is just another unhappy reminder that Rin has been avoiding talking to Haru all these months. He feels a little bit like a coward, but mostly like a bad friend. Haru had promised him earnestly that he’d keep training hard to beat him, and Rin had promised in turn that he would call him more. Or, more accurately, Rin had started to tear up a little at his goodbye party last summer, and Haru had turned to Rin and suggested serenely that he could just call him more often if he was going to miss him so much. Rin’s pretty sure he had just spluttered indignantly at that while the rest of the Iwatobi guys snickered and Gou dissolved into shrieky giggles at his side. It had been a good party.

“Actually, I haven’t seen Haru yet,” Rin reluctantly admits, which is apparently out of character enough that Sousuke raises both of his eyebrows. “Just my mom and Gou. And the Samezuka third-years…”

“Why not? You’ve been back for—three days, now?” Sousuke slips his hands into the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie, eyes glazing over with mirth. Rin braces himself for the jab. “Too nervous to pick up the phone and call your crush? I thought you were better than that, Matsuoka.”

“ _Oi_.” Even though he’d expected as much, Rin’s face still floods with color. Sousuke has made an effort, in recent months, to put aside any hard feelings he has toward Haru, but that doesn’t mean that Rin has to like the way it is _now_ , with Sousuke ready and raring to push his buttons at the slightest mention of his rival. It’s embarrassing, and completely exasperating, but all that Rin can do about it is roll his eyes and try to mask the caught look on his face with annoyance. “I’m not _nervous_ — it isn’t— and Haru is— it’s _not_  like that,” he says eloquently.

Sousuke levels him with an unimpressed look. “You flew him to another continent to show him a pretty pool. Plus, you introduced him to your homestay parents.” He strokes his chin. “Pretty sure all I got was a Skype call. That hurts, Rin.”

Rin scowls at him, face going splotchy, and repeats, “ _It’s not like that_.”

Sousuke just shrugs, maddeningly nonchalant. But at Rin’s long stretch of silence, he breaks into a grin. “So. Are you going to call?”

Rin lets out a strangled sigh and throws his hands into the air. “Fine! If it’ll get you off my case.” Feeling bold, and a little bit played, he fishes his phone out of his pocket and dials Haru’s number, then and there. He feels a slight stir of nerves in the few suspended seconds that he spends staring down at Haru’s icon on his screen—a picture of Iwatobi-chan that Rin had set for him back in high school, which seems kind of stupid now.

Then: “Rin?” comes Haru’s voice, warped and tinny from his water-damaged speaker. But even with the poor connection, Rin can detect a slightly strained quality to Haru’s voice. There’s a lot of noise in the background, garbled shouts and splashes, which would make sense if he’s at the pool. “I’m glad you called.”

“You— you are?” Rin says, brain momentarily sputtering.

Sousuke shoots him one final, significant look before graciously leaving the room.

“Mm,” Haru says vaguely. “You’re back in Japan, right?”

Rin blinks slowly. “Yeah, I am.” Gou or Makoto must have told him. His guilt resurfaces in slow undulations. “Where are you right now?”

“The All-Japan training camp. We just finished the friendly races. There’s this guy, Rin—” The connection fizzles, and Rin has to strain to hear him. “—Albert Wåhlander. He’s the world record holder for the 100- and 200-meter free.”

“Albert Wåhlander?” Rin echoes, rolling the name around on his tongue. Mikhail’s warning wades to the forefront of his mind—a swimmer _not of this world_ , his memory supplies. “Yeah, my coach told me about him.” His lips purse. “He’s really that good, then?”

“He beat me,” Haru says, like that’s an answer in and of itself. And really, it is. “By six seconds.”

“ _Six_?!” Rin screeches back. He leans back heavily against the wall. “Holy shit. Holy shit. _Haru_.”

“Yeah,” Haru agrees, sounding grim.

“Haru, we—” Rin’s heart kicks up, beating jack-rabbit fast in his chest. “We have to beat him. We _have_  to.”

“Yeah,” comes the reply, firmer this time.

“ _Yeah_. So, you’d better start getting fired up,” Rin tells him, leaving no room for debate. “I want to be stealing that gold medal away from _you_ , not some Swedish asshole.”

“Okay, Rin.” Haru sounds like he might be smiling. Maybe. Some shaky part of Rin’s heart breaks loose and rattles around behind his ribcage.

“Yeah, so you… remember that,” he finishes lamely. As the fight slowly drains from him, Rin becomes increasingly aware of how hard he’s breathing, how tight he’s gripping his phone, and gracelessly clears his throat. “Also, Haru, did you… want to grab dinner?”

————

“Mackerel, huh?” Rin says, hands tucked deep into his pockets so that he’ll keep them to himself. The urge to drag Haru in by the shoulders is building by the moment. “Really, Haru? That’s all it takes for some random guy to win your heart? Some cafeteria seafood?”

“He was nice, too,” Haru adds, almost certainly just to push his buttons.

Rin drags a hand over his face. “I don’t care how nice he is. We still have to kick his ass.”

“I know that, Rin.” Haru sounds amused. “That’s all you’ve been talking about since you got here.”

“Right. Sorry,” Rin says, feeling sheepish. He shakes himself internally. “I don’t want to talk about Albert Wåhlander anymore, anyway. I want to hear about Tokyo. You like your team alright? And your classes?”

“Now you sound like my mom,” Haru says despondently. Rin shoves him, lets escape a breathy laugh, and feels some giddy, simmering feeling bubble up inside of him. It feels warm, and full, but most of all it feels dangerous, and a little bit frightening. “I like my team. I already knew some of my teammates from before. A friend of mine from middle school, Asahi, and your former captain, Mikoshiba, obviously.”

Rin hums in acknowledgement, content to just walk and listen while he sorts himself out, until he sees the haunted look that comes over Haru’s face. “What? What is it?”

“Did you…” Haru shivers, actually _shivers_. “Did you know that the Mikoshibas have a sister?”

Rin makes a choking sound. “What? Seriously?” He feels a sympathetic shudder roll down his spine. “You’re shitting me. You met her? Is she…?”

Haru grimaces. “She’s… like them.”

Rin groans, probably a bit louder than the news actually warrants, but it feels good to be silly and melodramatic—to get worked up about stupid things like they always do when they’re together. He feels, simultaneously, his most and least at ease when he’s around Haru, wonders how it is that he can feel so self-conscious and so feather-light at once, and tries not to think too hard about what that means. “Great. One more Mikoshiba I’ll have to keep away from my sister.”

Haru’s lips twitch, but he says nothing.

“Where do you want to eat, anyway?” Rin asks, suddenly remembering where they are. They’ve been wandering up and down the long row of shops and restaurants for some time now, and in his preoccupation with seeing Haru again, and talking to Haru, and _not touching Haru_ , Rin had almost entirely forgotten the sheer _mass_  of people around them—like for a short time the world had narrowed to only the two of them.

“Somewhere with mackerel,” Haru answers, completely unhelpfully.

Rin flicks his eyes skyward. “ _Tch_. I don’t know why I even ask.” Giving in to the impulse at last, he hooks an arm around Haru’s shoulders and says, “Lucky for you, I read about this place online that’s supposed to have good steak  _and_  seafood. Lemme pull it up on my phone; it should be close by—”

“Haru!” comes a faint chorus of voices, slicing through Rin’s train of thought. Haru turns toward the sound and Rin reluctantly lets his arm fall as a rather eclectic group of strangers approaches, bright-eyed and rowdy.

“Haru! I’m so glad we found you!” exclaims a guy with wavy, pink hair. “We’re here for the All-Japan invitational. Asahi and Ikuya also qualified! Isn’t that exciting?”

Haru’s smile is small, but there, nonetheless. “That’s great. Congratulations.”

“Thanks!” says another guy with tousled, fire engine-red hair. His smile is a little wild; he reminds Rin, inexplicably, of Momotaro.

“Haru,” greets the third and final stranger, his voice unexpectedly gruff. He has thick strands of seafoam green hair falling into his eyes and a cool expression not entirely unlike Haru’s. His eyes keep flitting over to Rin, who’s been standing politely back from the rest of the group, waiting to be introduced. “Your friend?” he asks curtly.

Haru stands up a little straighter and drags Rin forward by the elbow, apparently remembering his manners. “Um, yes. This is Rin.” He glances up at Rin, then, as if to ask him for help. Rin quirks an eyebrow, unreasonably charmed.

“Yo.” Rin plasters on a smile that becomes just a little more genuine, with Haru’s fingers gripping his forearm. “Matsuoka Rin. Nice to meet you all.”

“Rin, this is Kirishima Ikuya, Shiina Asahi, and Shigino Kisumi,” Haru says. “We all went to the same middle school.”

“Man, good times,” Kisumi says brightly, reaching up to clasp Haru’s shoulder companionably. But Haru bats Kisumi’s hand away the same way he’d swat at a fly, and as suddenly as that small act gives Rin pause, it makes his head swell with something akin to flattery—because his own arm had been resting there only moments ago, and for all of his sighing and grumbling, Haru had never refused him outright.

Rin shakes the thought from his head, and the shivery feeling in his chest that accompanies it, and says on a whim, “So, um, you’re all swimmers?”

“All except for Kisumi,” Asahi says, glomming onto the pink-haired guy. “He plays _basketball_. How lame is that?”

“So rude, Asahi,” Kisumi admonishes, as Asahi lightly manhandles him.

Rin chuckles, and notices belatedly that Ikuya seems to have turned his gaze back onto him at some point. He would be lying if he said that it didn’t unnerve him, to be the focus of such boldfaced scrutiny in amber eyes. He is so unlike Natsuya, with his chaotic charm and cocksure attitude, that Rin has half a mind to wonder if they’re actually related at all. Discomfort peaking, Rin clears his throat.

“You know, I actually met your brother in Sydney,” Rin says conversationally. “He came to my SC; we grabbed dinner a few times. Now he’s staying at my place. Nice guy!”

He expects Ikuya to warm up at the mention of his brother, or to at least be a little more receptive to Rin’s attempt at raising an olive branch, but Ikuya only squints at him, like he’s trying to decipher something from Rin’s comment. He must come to some conclusion, because a moment later, Ikuya clicks his tongue at him and mutters, “ _Tch_. Another one of Nii-san’s conquests,” to which the entire group falls abruptly silent.

Predictably, Rin’s face catches fire. “Hey! What’s that supposed to—” Rin splutters out, but he stops himself short at Haru’s icy look.

“We’re leaving,” Haru announces, without preamble. “See you guys later.” He turns on his heels, leaving no room for debate; clearly, Rin is expected to follow.

It would be mortifying enough already, that Ikuya thinks that Rin slept with his _brother_ , and then _announced it to the whole group_ , but it’s made all the more humiliating by the fact that it’s actually _true_. Natsuya had actually been really patient with him, really sweet—just playful enough to put Rin at ease, because he’d probably realized pretty quickly that Rin had no idea what he was doing. Rin didn’t tell a soul afterward, and he’d made Natsuya swear to him that he wouldn’t go babbling about it, either. In the end, though, it didn’t matter; Rin is apparently completely transparent about these things even without Natsuya’s help.

“Wait! Haru! We wanted to tell you that Makoto is here,” Kisumi calls after him, sounding apologetic. Rin actually feels sort of bad for the guy; he seems pretty decent.

“He’s studying at a café nearby,” Asahi supplies. “He told us he has to work on an essay tonight, but that he’d head over to your place as soon as he’s done.”

“Thanks,” Haru tells them both. “I’ll text him.” Then, he’s striding away.

Rin makes to go after him, tosses a quick, “Um, see you,” over his shoulder before making his escape.

“Haru,” Ikuya calls out, in that gravelly voice of his. Rin is certain that Haru would still be walking if not for the crossing signal, blinking red and angry at them to ‘WAIT.’ “Still planning on racing the individual medley?”

Haru barely turns his head when he answers, “No,” tone positively glacial. Rin would probably find the sour look on Ikuya’s face amusing if the question didn’t completely throw him for a loop.

The signal changes, then, blaring at them to ‘CROSS,’ and Rin exhales noisily, manages to make it a sound of relief despite the blood boiling in his veins. When he glances over, Haru’s mouth is in a thin, unhappy line, eyebrows creased together.

“I don’t know why he’s acting like that,” Haru confesses to him, clearly frustrated. After a beat, he adds, “Sorry.”

Rin’s anger vanishes in one exhale.

“Haru… you have nothing to be sorry for,” he says gently. Haru’s fierce protectiveness actually makes Rin feel a bit warm, now that he thinks of it. “Did you guys have a falling out or something?”

“Not really.” Haru looks away. “After I quit the swim team in middle school, Ikuya went to America to train abroad. We… didn’t keep in touch.”

There are a few disparities, but the parallels are undeniable—Ikuya’s story is also Rin’s. And because of Rin’s selfishness, his misplaced anger, Haru has had to endure the grief of an estranged friendship twice over. His throat goes tight.

“Ah, that’s… that’s too bad,” he croaks. Haru’s head whips back around, and Rin knows immediately that he’s reading everything on his face. “Haru, you should know—”

“We don’t have to talk about that, Rin,” Haru says quietly.

Rin appreciates the out—knows that Haru has already forgiven him a hundred times over—but for once, he doesn’t want to take it. He takes a deep, rattling breath and lets it out through his teeth, forcing himself to ride this wave of courage. “You should know that it wasn’t your fault. That I quit swimming.” His hands clench at his sides. “It wasn’t because of our race. I realized that I wasn’t getting better, and I didn’t know how to cope with that. So, that’s on me.” Once Rin has gotten started, it’s hard to stop. “You’ve never discouraged me, Haru. In fact, you’ve always inspired me. You make me want to be better. Like I said before—you’ve always, um, given me something to aim for.” Rin’s thoughts come to a trickle. “Um.”

Haru takes hold of his wrist, fingers sliding underneath the smooth, buttery leather of his jacket sleeve, and says with feeling, “ _Rin_.”

Rin meets his gaze tentatively. “Yeah?”

Haru bites his lip. “I’m hungry.”

————

“I thought you only swam free?” Rin says later, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. He’s sure the jealousy is streaked, white-hot, across his face.

Haru eyes him knowingly. “I was helping out a friend,” he replies smoothly.

Feeling chastised, Rin grouses, “Right. Very noble of you.”

The heaviness of their previous interaction with Haru’s friends—and their brief but earnest conversation afterward—has vanished, replaced by their usual brand of arrogant repartee and reckless, boyish humor. Rin has been fishing for some explanation for Haru racing in the individual medley, having just learned that bit of information from Ikuya, and Haru has been rolling Rin’s questions off his shoulders all night. The golden glow of the restaurant renders Haru’s features harsh, devastating, all hard lines and sharp angles; the quirk of his lips casts a shadow over his chin.

“Don’t worry, Rin. I still like racing you best,” Haru reassures him, syrupy sweet and patronizing.

Rin rolls his eyes, prays that the dim lighting hides everything he knows his face is betraying. “ _Tch_. Flatterer.”

Haru cocks his head. “What? I can’t have other rivals, Rin?”

“You can have as many rivals as you want,” Rin says stormily. But as quick as Ikuya’s scowl appears in his mind’s eye, it vanishes, images of Albert Wåhlander conjured up in its place. “I’ve just never known you to be upset about losing.”

Haru must sense the shift in conversation, because he falls back heavily into his chair, sighing.

“I only care about how the water feels,” he ruminates, “and it hasn’t felt right, recently.”

A sick swell of guilt kicks up inside Rin’s stomach, and the feeling congeals as Rin considers Haru’s uncertain beginning: freshly arrived in Tokyo, surrounded by unfamiliar sights, alone in this new world of competition—save for Makoto cheering him on from the stands—and already saving people left and right. Sinking so that they can swim. Rin’s own words from a few years ago spring to mind— _you will swim for me_.

Rin is used to the ruthless, lonely grind of the competitive swimming world, but Haru isn’t. Rin was meant to be Haru’s anchor in this world—and he had completely let him down. He’d barely spoken a word to him out of sheer cowardice before the pull of a national competition lured him back to Japan. Rin’s chest feels hollow, like it could cave in at any moment.

“Okay. So, let’s make it right again.”

Haru’s head snaps up, eyes going wide. “Rin?”

“Haru, let’s go swimming. Right now.”

————

Judging by the puzzled look on his face, Haru must have expected Rin to challenge him to a race—or something equally on-brand—but when they arrive at Taka University’s pool, Rin finds that all he really wants is to float around with Haru.

Haru seems to catch on to his mood soon enough, because the next minute, he’s stripping down to his boxers and gliding leisurely from one end of the pool to the other, face utterly serene.

“No jammers?” Rin heckles him, catching him after one of his laps.

“I don’t wear them everywhere,” Haru says petulantly.

Rin grins. “Now that’s character growth.”

Haru shifts his weight minutely and goes from floating on his back to treading water in an instant. “I could say the same about you.”

Enthralled, Rin asks, “And what does that mean?”

“You haven’t cried this trip.” After a moment’s consideration, he adds, “Yet.”

“Hey!” Rin protests, though he’s pretty delighted at the teasing. “I resent that.” Haru smiles at him, and Rin feels so much.

The silence that follows feels full as Rin gathers his courage.

“Haru,” he begins. He has to ask—he _has_  to. “Are you sure you still want to do this? To… compete?”

Bits and pieces of their impromptu trip to Australia drift, mindless, unsolicited, behind his eyes. Sitting close on the train, watching Haru’s expression of rapt interest in the reflection of the window as Rin pointed out landmarks, knees knocking together surreptitiously. His clumsy confession by the fountain, and the liberated feeling that had washed over him afterward. Their trek to the beach, backpacks and all, and the bittersweet reminder that, an ocean away, Rin’s only connection to home as a child had been the ocean itself. Watching Haru step up onto the diving block at the Sydney Aquatic Centre, glowing with newfound inspiration—because ultimately, it hadn’t been a race _then_ , either, to kick Haru into high gear.

(Waking up in the morning, to Rin’s short-lived contentment and subsequent horror, with Haru’s hair in his mouth—)

“Of course, I do,” Haru says, effectively pulling Rin from his reverie. “I’m just… trying to find that sight you showed me again.”

 _Haru…_  The emotion gets caught in Rin’s throat. “I just want to make sure that you’re enjoying yourself. The future isn’t supposed to seem gloomy. It’s supposed to seem… bright. Exciting. You know?”

Haru shrugs, shakes the hair out of his eyes. “I guess it just looks brighter when you’re here,” he says, with such sincerity that Rin feels as though he might cry after all.

Rin has always lived in Haru’s shadow. It used to bother him—used to make him feel like a darkness had been cast over him. Until one day, he realized—the shadow loved him. Shielded him, protected him. Even when Rin was so cruel to him that just thinking of it makes his heart go cold, Haru had remained steadfastly loyal. Rin still doesn’t know what he ever did to deserve that kind of devotion—just knows that he wants to return it to him tenfold.

Once upon a time, Haru helped Rin to fall in love with swimming again, and now, Rin wants desperately to return the favor. But Rin can’t do that if he keeps running away from him—if he can’t even pick up the goddamn phone and call him every once in a while. Rin sometimes feels like, in trying to rein in his feelings for Haru, he’s held back too much and forgotten how to be his friend. But he owes it to Haru to at least try. It’s not Haru’s fault, after all, that Rin loves Haru in one more way than Haru loves him.

“It’s just about getting to that place where we can swim together again. In the _big leagues_. We’re so close, Haru,” Rin says, and feels a thrill go through him at the thought. They _are_  close; Olympic qualifiers are just around the corner. Rin takes Haru by the hand and switches to something a little more lighthearted. “Besides, I can’t hold your hand the whole way there. I trained with you all summer, remember? Even made you go running, hit the weights—you can’t have forgotten that.” He quirks a grin, all false bravado, and maybe his next question is a little too honest. “Aren’t you sick of me yet?”

Haru stares down at their joined hands, and then at Rin, and Rin’s stomach momentarily disappears. “No,” he says, and Haru must see it in his eyes—the silent question of whether he should pull away, because he squeezes his fingers and continues, too earnestly, “I started walking toward the future because of you. You know that.”

So much for reining in his feelings. Rin tackles him against the lane line and coos, loud and obnoxious, “Wow, that’s _so_  romantic, Haru,” because there’s no tiptoeing around something like that. Especially not without Rin embarrassing himself more than he already has.

“You’re an idiot,” Haru says, torn between pushing Rin away and clinging to his shoulders so he doesn’t drown. The fond exasperation beats his sullen introspection at the restaurant, so Rin takes it as a win.

————

In the heat of the moment, they’d both neglected to consider the logistics of having brought neither swimsuits nor towels with them; fabric clinging to damp skin, they reluctantly gather up their clothes and start to re-dress themselves. As Rin is shaking his socks out of his jeans, which had gotten caught in his pant legs at some point on the way down, Haru asks him, “Do you have a place to stay? Do you want to come over?”

Rin is touched by the offer, until he remembers: “Isn’t Makoto staying at your place already?” He’s pretty sure Haru’s friends had mentioned as much.

Haru shrugs and says, a tad forcefully, “I have more than one futon.”

Rin tries to smother his smile as he laces his boots back up, is aware that he probably looks ridiculous, grinning down at the floor. “Nanase Haruka, inviting me over for a sleepover? Wow, I’m honored.” Rin shakes his head, gives an incredulous little laugh. “Somewhere in time, an eleven-year-old Rin is over the moon and he doesn’t know why.”

Haru’s lips twitch, and Rin can tell that he, too, is fighting a smile. “You’re an idiot,” he concludes, for the second time that night. He fiddles with the zipper of his jacket, drags it uselessly up and down, and barrels on, “Do you want to or not?”

“Yeah, okay,” Rin says, because he never was able to say ‘no’ to Haru.

On the train over to Haru’s, Rin shoots out a text to Sousuke: _I’m staying at Haru’s tonight._  The compartment feels claustrophobic, a far cry from the modest crowds in Sano or Iwatobi. His and Haru’s elbows knock together as they stand and cling to the straps hanging from the ceiling, and Rin tries to center himself on that point of contact, that quiet calm that Haru exudes. Sousuke texts him back _Atta boy_  a moment later, and Rin isn’t sure if he’s relieved or not that he doesn’t even have a free hand to facepalm with.

Rin looks up to find Haru studying him curiously. “Something wrong?”

Rin exhales, a long-suffering sound. “Not really. Sousuke’s just being…” He feigns a loss for words, shrugging his shoulders and tilting his head from side to side, unwilling to offer too much context.

“Hm,” is all that Haru deigns that with.

To Rin’s relief, the train ride isn’t long, and the anxious feeling in his stomach uncoils as he admires the scenery en route to Haru’s apartment. He marvels at the _sakura_  trees lining the sidewalks, at the roof of a natatorium peeking out just above the trees, as clear a sign as ever that Haru was practically destined to live here. Rin smiles to himself, quietly approving, as they climb the stairs up to Haru’s floor.

“This is me,” Haru says, somewhat superfluously, as he swings open the door.

The place is nice—small, but well designed, though in comparison to Rin’s apartment, it hardly looks lived in at all. Tidy and sparse as it is, it’s painfully apparent to Rin that Haru is well acquainted with living on his own; having practically raised himself, with his parents out of the picture from such a young age, of course Haru would know how to maintain a household. Rin toes off his shoes, empties the contents of his pockets onto the low table by the _tatami_ , and ventures that it’s probably the most clutter the room has seen since Haru moved in.

“No Makoto?” Rin says, as the door clicks shut behind them.

Haru fishes out his phone, squints down at the screen. “Oh. He says he’s on his way over. His essay took longer than he thought.”

“Probably for the best,” Rin says, thinking of how they were late arriving themselves.

“Do you want to take a shower?” Haru asks. Rin thinks of the chlorine steeping into his clothing and nods, smiles gratefully. “You can go first. I’ll lay out the futons.”

“Thanks,” Rin says, starting off down the hallway in search of the bathroom. “Towels in the closet?” he calls back. Then, as an afterthought: “Oh, and can I borrow some clothes?”

“There’s some T-shirts and sweatpants in the dresser,” Haru replies, voice slightly strained. Rin hears something heavy thump to the floor, presumably one of the futons. “Just look in my room.”

Rin makes a sound of accede and lets himself into the room at the end of the hall. Haru’s room, like the rest of the apartment, is quite bare; he has a bed, a desk, a lamp, and a dresser with some photographs displayed on top of it. There’s a framed photo of Haru’s parents posing in front of a waterfall that looks old and faded with time, which makes Rin’s heart ache for him for all sorts of reasons. Next to it is a selfie of the Iwatobi team at a tournament, which Rin ascertains that Gou, grinning widely in the foreground, must have taken. At the end of line is a side-by-side of their relay photos from elementary school and high school, with Rin leaning into Haru and smiling too broadly in each of them. Rin’s eyes sting with the telltale prick of incoming tears, because this _means_  something, that Haru puts all of these where he can see them.

Rin sniffles and spurs himself into action before he’s caught snooping, yanking open one of Haru’s drawers to find—swimsuits. An entire _drawer_  full of them, all with nearly imperceptible variations of purple and white cording. This time, Rin really does facepalm—mutters into his hand, overcome with hilarity in the moment, stunned by the truth of it, “Why do I even like you?”

————

“Nagisa will be so jealous when he hears that we had a sleepover without him,” Rin hears Makoto chuckle as he emerges from the bathroom, flanked by a massive cloud of steam. Then, making Rin stop in his tracks: “Did you have a nice night with Rin? I’m sure it felt good to catch up, just the two of you.”

There’s a short but full pause before Haru answers. “We had dinner. And we went swimming. And he smiled a lot.” A strange feeling worms its way around Rin’s heart and squeezes there.

Makoto starts to say, “Haru, I know that you and Rin—” and the realization that Rin has been eavesdropping comes crashing down like a meteor. He throws his towel around his neck and rushes around the corner to the living room before Makoto can finish his train of thought.

“Rin!” Makoto says, a sound full of energy. “It’s so good to see you!” He rises to his feet and presses a warm mug of tea into Rin’s hands. “Here; we were just having tea. I convinced Haru it wouldn’t be fair if I was the only one caffeinated, so.”

They end up talking for hours, sitting around the low table in Haru’s living room, fueled by nostalgia and black tea. Rin asks about Makoto’s coaching program, and Makoto in turn wants to hear about Rin’s training regimen. Haru stays relatively quiet, but occasionally chimes in to give his input or ask a question—once, to ask Rin how Russell and Lori are doing, which Rin finds incredibly endearing, and another time to ask if Rin has been back to the beach.

“I’ve been lots of times!” Rin reports cheerfully. “Even dragged Natsuya along once or twice. He’s such a priss; he hates the sand.”

“So, he really lives with you now?” Makoto asks, picking up an earlier thread. “I don’t think I’ve seen him or Nao since middle school.”

Rin rubs the back of his neck. “Er, yeah. For a few months, now. Anyway, you’ll see him soon enough at the All-Japan invitational finals. He’s a free spirit, you know—travelling the world, chasing competitions.” Rin scoffs, shakes his head. “Couldn’t be me.”

Makoto’s smile spreads slowly. “What do you mean? That sounds exactly like you.” Rin punches his shoulder, and Makoto snickers.

“Does he pay you rent?” Haru asks, out of the blue. Makoto slants Haru a dubious look, but even he looks reluctantly curious as he wipes the tears of mirth from his eyes.

“Sometimes,” Rin says vaguely, because it’s easier than explaining that it’s nice to have someone to talk to in Japanese, and to occasionally be a warm body in his bed. He thinks back on Ikuya’s comment from earlier, wonders if Haru is remembering it, too, and feels compelled to add, “He’s a good guy,” as he sinks further into the _tatami_ , self-consciousness swallowing him whole.

In the end, it’s Makoto who comes to his rescue. “I think I’m finally crashing. From the… the caffeine.” He yawns pointedly into his hand. “Is anyone else ready to go to bed?”

“I could sleep,” Rin says, getting to his feet and raising his arms in a stretch so deep his eyes start to water.

Haru eyes their sleeping arrangement doubtfully before tilting his head up at Rin. “You’re sure the futon is okay?” he asks, fussing some more with the sheets. “It’s bad to sleep on the floor before a competition.”

Makoto has a strange smile on his face as he gathers up their empty mugs. “You’ve always been very particular about your pillows and things, haven’t you, Rin-chan?” he weighs in, before disappearing into the kitchen.

Rin tries desperately to school his mortification into something haughty, exasperated. “For the millionth time, Haru—I’ll be fine. I don’t want a repeat of Sydney.”

“Really?” Haru clicks his tongue at him, ruthless. “Because you seemed pretty comfortable, drooling all over my—”

“Shut  _up_ , Haru,” Rin chokes out, more of a plea than an admonition. Rin doesn’t think he imagines Makoto’s quiet, clipped laughter from the kitchen, and he certainly doesn’t imagine the coquettish look on Haru’s face, because his legs wouldn’t feel so traitorously wobbly if he had.

————

The next day, Rin wrangles Haru and Makoto into a late-morning run, with the added incentive of passing by the natatorium to get a glimpse up close. He can already feel the fatigue settling into his bones; coming off of his Australian training regimen, an entire morning without exercise has felt like an eternity.

Haru leads them down a path lined with _sakura_  trees, and as Rin gets into the groove of it, he allows his mind to wander. The abundance of cherry blossoms takes him back to the school courtyard in Iwatobi, where he’d finally convinced Haru and Makoto to swim in the relay with him—and where he’d also broken the news to them that he was moving to Australia to follow his dad’s dream. He’d been so cocksure and arrogant, even back then—convinced that he could do anything, charm anyone—until suddenly, he wasn’t, couldn’t. Australia had rattled him to his core; losing that race to Haru over New Year’s had just been the icing on the cake. It’d felt good to finally tell Haru that he wasn’t to blame for his swimming hiatus—that he’d always admired him, aimed for him, from eight-thousand kilometers away and from six inches over in their shared double at the Russell Hotel. It had been a love confession in its own right, and probably the only one that Rin would ever give to Haru. Rin will just have to live with that; it will have to be enough.

Rin turns to look at him, the emotion thick in his throat—but the tinny melody erupting from Haru’s earbuds, and the sounds of their feet slapping the pavement, quickly center him back in reality.

“Shit. I forgot my headphones at your place,” Rin grumbles, suddenly desperate for a distraction. He eyes Haru’s pair wistfully and is struck by a thought. “Hey, Haru. What do you listen to when you run, anyway?”

Haru’s eyes flick up to meet his briefly. “Water sounds,” he answers, completely seriously. Rin stumbles, mid-jog, into a laugh so sudden and so raucous that they have to stop and wait for him to catch his breath, doubled over with his hands on his knees. Makoto laughs along with him, messy breath, as Haru looks on in bemusement.

“Anyway,” Haru cuts in, after several moments of this, “Rin, this is the pool.”

When Rin finally looks up, clutching his stomach and wiping his eyes, Haru gestures rather gratuitously toward the tall, domed building in front of them.

“Hey, Nanase-senpai! Tachibana-senpai!” Rin turns just in time to see a dark-haired kid barrel into Makoto’s legs, sporting square legs and a Tokyo 2020 T-shirt. “You’re back!”

“Ah, Misaki-kun,” Makoto says warmly. “It’s good to see you again.”

The kid redirects his attention to Haru and takes hold of his hand, eyes shining with veneration. Rin’s eyebrows climb his forehead, but Haru seems uncharacteristically unbothered by this, regarding Misaki-kun with a warm gaze.

“I’ve gotten so much faster since you last saw me!” The kid is just bursting at the seams. He tugs on Haru’s hand. “Will you come watch me swim? Inside? Please?”

Which is how Rin ends up inside the natatorium watching Misaki-kun swim laps for them. Makoto seems pretty delighted by his front crawl, so Rin figures the kid must have made some progress after all.

“I bet you could even beat your rival now,” Makoto praises him, which earns him an emphatic nod from Misaki-kun.

“Yeah! We played at the park together the other day, and he told me he’s been improving his times. So, that means I have to work really hard to keep up with him! Especially since I don’t have Coach to help me anymore…”

Rin is honestly floored by the kid’s honesty; he can’t recall ever having been so candid, so childishly earnest, about wanting to beat Haru or Sousuke in a race. Gou would probably beg to differ, but, whatever.

“Haru and Rin are rivals, too,” Makoto stage-whispers, causing both him and Haru to stand at attention. “They race all the time. Once, in a high school competition, they even _tied_.”

“ _Whoa_ ,” hisses Misaki-kun, brimming with childish infatuation.

Sometime later, on the way back to Haru’s apartment, Rin admits, “He’s a pretty cute kid.”

“Yeah, he is,” Makoto agrees, face tilted up at the trees.

Haru’s meditative look smooths into something more tender. “Back in high school,” he begins, garnering Rin and Makoto’s attention, “I hated scouting, because for me, it wasn’t about times. It was about the people I was swimming with. That feeling of comradery.” He smiles softly. “Meeting Misaki-kun reminded me of that. That having friends you can swim with, or at least swim for, makes everything worth it.”

Rin isn’t stupid; he’d connected the dots between himself and Haru, and Misaki-kun and this mysterious rival of his. But now, with Haru’s feelings articulated so plainly, Rin is beginning to think that he hadn’t truly grasped the strength of their bond—hadn’t understood just how much of Haru’s swimming was for him, for their shared future. He’s sure that Haru would be happy to compete if only to travel the world and swim in as many Olympic-sized pools as he can—that had certainly been one factor in Rin’s decision to bring him to the Sydney Aquatic Centre—but for as much as Haru has always given the illusion of introversion, of embracing the solitary lifestyle left for him by his parents in Iwatobi, Rin knows that Haru’s world would shrivel up and go dry without his friendships.

“Haru,” Makoto gasps, cheeks pink, clearly moved by Haru’s words.

Rin hooks an arm around Haru’s shoulders. “And everyone says that _I’m_  a romantic swimming maniac,” Rin purrs at him, trying to lighten the mood. He throws in his best shark grin for effect.

Haru rolls his shoulders in a halfhearted attempt to shake him off, a rosy dust cascading over his cheeks. “Shut up,” he says mildly, but there’s a smile in his eyes, one that holds its breath just beneath the surface.

————

“I’ve never seen you slap the wall that hard before, Nanase,” Azuma says approvingly. Then, he frowns. “Have you been holding out on me?”

Haru doesn’t deign that with a response, per se, but he does roll his eyes spectacularly as he clings to the edge of the pool, trying to catch his breath. Rin sends him a conspiratorial smile from the next lane over but wisely holds his tongue. His own coach is watching from the sidelines with his hands on his hips, clearly satisfied with his performance.

“Looks like our swimmers are evenly matched, Ryuuji,” Mikhail says coyly, in a clear but wayward attempt to get a rise out of his old rival. Azuma scoffs and juts his chin, adverse, as always, to Mikhail’s attempts at friendly banter.

Rin hoists himself out of the pool and turns to offer a hand to Haru. “You hear that, Haru?” He cocks an eyebrow, leaning in close. “ _Evenly matched_.”

“You wish,” Haru fires back, but he takes Rin’s hand, regardless.

Their coaches make their exits some time later, but Rin hangs back with Haru to run through some cool-down drills. It’s their last practice before the All-Japan invitational finals, and butterflies don’t even begin to cover it; Rin’s stomach has grown teeth and claws, has eaten away at his insides and left him hollowed out, nearly concave. But if Rin thought that _his_  nerves were corrosive, Haru’s are incendiary; he surprises Rin on their way back to locker room by taking him to the side and gritting out, “What if I don’t make it. What if I can’t swim with you,” with such a bleak look on his face that Rin’s heart pops like an ember.

And, oh, this is it, isn’t it? Looming over them, so huge, and so monstrous, Rin has to step back to view it in its entirety—the fear of failure, rearing its ugly head, and holding a lit match to Haru’s self-doubt. Rin knows the feeling so well he’s baffled it’s taken him this long to see it. Perhaps he’s just had Haru up on a pedestal for so long that he hadn’t thought the beast was capable of reaching him.

“You’re gonna make it,” Rin tells him fiercely, and imagines he’s plucking the beast’s cold fingers from Haru’s flesh, one by one. “And, shit, Haru, even if you don’t—you’ll always be in my life. Even if we can’t swim together like this, we’ll still swim together. Call me a rival, a fan, whatever—” He waves a hand, and Haru snorts. “—but even I can admit, some things are more important than swimming. _You’re_  more important. You know that, right?”

The genuine surprise on Haru’s face, followed by slow acceptance, is more than a little heartbreaking. Still, Rin is glad to have said the words as soon as he gets them out, because for as much as they’ve always communicated with each other through swimming—an olive branch in the form of a relay spot, a ‘thank you’ with a pool full of cherry blossoms—there are some things that can only be expressed with words. Rin had promised himself that he would be a better friend to Haru, and if wading through awkward conversations and putting out fires is part of that, then so be it.

But as soon as one fire has been extinguished, another one comes alight. Natsuya comes bounding down the hall with Nao and Ikuya hunched under either of his arms, chattering at full volume. Ikuya looks clearly unhappy from his vantage point, and Nao looks like he’s consenting to the situation, but barely.

There are a few things that happen in the moments after their group of three makes eye contact with Rin and Haru: Natsuya stops abruptly in his tracks, inadvertently jerking Nao to a halt, and Ikuya stumbles, pulled forward by his momentum, and breaks free from his brother’s hold. As Ikuya rights himself and locks his gaze onto Rin, the gears in his head seem to turn, grind, throw sparks—his contempt leaching into the chlorinated air, as thick as smoke, making it harder to breathe with every mouthful of black air that Rin pulls into his lungs.

Then: a wildfire.

Ikuya looks positively volatile as he rushes forward to grab Rin by the goggles, which had been hanging loosely around his neck. He gets right into his face and yells, spit flying, “You seriously couldn’t handle losing one stupid race? In fucking _middle school_? Are you that much of a sore loser?” Ikuya’s nostrils flair as he backs Rin to the edge of the pool. Rin’s heart is hammering, blood roaring in his ears. “You could’ve just gone home and cried about it, but instead, you had to make Haru feel like _shit_ —”

“Ikuya,  _stop_. Let him go,” Haru interrupts, trying desperately to place himself between Rin and Ikuya. He looks scared, Rin registers faintly—like he’s afraid one well-aimed blow to Rin’s ego might send him spiraling again, the way he had when he came back from Australia the first time.

Ikuya is still roaring in his ear, “He quit the swim team because of _you_ , Matsuoka, you know that?” He jabs Rin square in the chest. “What the fuck kind of friend are you, anyway? You only give a damn about him if you beat him in a race? You should’ve just fucked off to Sydney for good—”

“Ikuya!” Natsuya exclaims, horror-stricken, but to Rin his voice sounds far away, muffled by the pounding of his pulse in his ears.

“ _That’s enough_ ,” Haru cuts in, changing tactics and tugging at Rin’s arm, presumably to commandeer him away from the pool and toward the locker room.

“Haru, wait,” Rin hears himself say. “He’s right. It’s about time that someone got properly mad at me.”

“ _No_ ,” Haru grates out. “We’ve been through this. It’s fine. _We’re_  fine.”

“I want to talk to Kirishima,” Rin says firmly, “in private.”

Ikuya is all fiery rage, just a hair’s breadth away.

“Fine,” Ikuya spits out.

————

“I just thought… I was special to him.” Ikuya curls in on himself and glares up at Rin, apropos of nothing, from the dingy, locker-room floor. It’s such a transformation from the Ikuya of thirty seconds ago that Rin begins to wonder in earnest if he had imagined the whole thing. “Go ahead. Laugh at me.”

“What? I’m not going to laugh at you,” Rin says, startled. Resigning himself to this turn of events, he slides his back down one of the nearby lockers, the joints in his knees creaking in protest, and figures—if he’s going to have a heart-to-heart in a locker room, he can at least try to make himself comfortable. “I know that, um, Haru often brings out these types of… emotions… in people.” He winces, feeling like he’s already revealed too much inadvertently. “And, anyway—you really think you’re not special to him? Haru never swam the butterfly for _me_ , or the backstroke for Makoto.” Rin jabs a finger into his chest, a mirror of Ikuya’s gesture from earlier, and slants him a significant look. “You got him to swim the whole damn _medley_.”

Ikuya scoffs, then, but it’s mostly for show; Rin can already see the words getting through to him, penetrating his thick skull.

“I…” Ikuya blinks down at his knees, eyes going wide.

After a long stretch of silence, Rin rises back to his feet and offers him a shallow smile. “Don’t let it go to your head,” he warns him halfheartedly, and thinks he might hear Ikuya huff out a laugh as he walks away.

————

“This is it, Haru.” Rin breathes out an incredulous laugh. The stadium is buzzing, overflowing with people, and though it looks no different from any other they’ve been to, Rin’s heart still swells with the importance of it all.

This is really it; they could go to the _Olympics_. It feels surreal, and so incredible, with Haru standing beside him, the pair of them gazing all around in muted wonder.

“Rin,” Haru murmurs, seemingly unable to say anything else.

Their coaches come to stand behind them, and Rin turns to acknowledge the awkward but well-meaning clap on the back that Mikhail greets him with. Haru’s coach looks as stoic as always, but Mikhail has a nostalgic air about him as he surveys them.

“Doesn’t this take you back, Ryuuji?” Mikhail says, sighing dramatically.

Azuma grimaces. “Not really.”

Rin plants his face into Haru’s shoulder to smother an aborted giggle. He feels giddy, his pre-competition nerves evolving from queasy anticipation into jittery excitement.

Haru peers at him over the collar of his Taka U jacket. “You’re more high-strung than usual,” he points out, like Rin isn’t already excruciatingly aware of that fact.

“We’re at the qualifiers for the Olympics! I’m not allowed to be happy?”

Haru scoffs, rolls his eyes, but Rin can detect a softness there, too, as he mumbles, “I didn’t say ‘happy,’ did I?”

————

It’s a race against the clock more than each other, but it’s all the same to Rin; he’s got Haru in the next lane over, 100 meters of pool to tear through, and his lifelong dream dangling over his head like a carrot. Oh, and Albert fucking Wåhlander.

Maybe there is some merit to this _free_  thing that Haru’s been preaching since elementary school. _The water is alive, but there’s nothing to fear. Don’t resist the water; welcome it._  Rin has never been effortless the way that Haru is, but maybe he doesn’t have to be. Perhaps ambition can also liberate, can provide its own release. Maybe it’s okay to aim too high, to want too much—to chase your dreams in powerful strokes and huge, gulping breaths. While Haru glides, Rin overcomes—and that, too, is free.

————

After the medal ceremony, Rin hauls Haru into the locker room and reels him into a suffocating hug.

“I’m so happy, Haru,” Rin tells him, voice cracking over the syllables—and it’s true, despite the hitch in his lungs and the water pooling in his eyes. Rin knows that this type of physical contact does little for Haru, but Rin craves this, the emotional release of it. He couldn’t imagine breaking down like this in front of anyone else, except for maybe Sousuke, who would rib him so badly afterward that it would render moot any temporary comfort that the gesture may have brought to him.

“He’s proud of you, Rin,” Haru says after a moment, so quietly that Rin is doubtful at first that he heard him correctly. But, then, the tears start flowing in earnest as the obvious meaning dawns on him. The memories have been shoved to some dark corner of Rin’s heart for so long that his pain has congealed—a wound that clots rather than oozes. It’s not as though Rin hasn’t been thinking about his dad in all of this, because he _has_ , and his absence is more vivid today than it has been in years. The reminder that he can’t be here, sitting next to his mom and his sister, cheering him on from the stands, doesn’t quite sting so much as throb, persistent, bruising, behind his ribcage.

“Obviously, he’s proud of me,” Rin says, cocksure to distract from the tremble in his hands, his shoulders, his spine. He is strung out on adrenaline, relief, grief, affection—an endless thread of inconvenient feelings.

But Haru just huffs a soft, amused sound against his shoulder, like he can see right through him—like he knows that Rin is barely holding it together. Rin has played many roles in his life—the rival, the captain, the hopeless romantic. Shark teeth, _sakura_  trees. Haru knows all of these roles intimately—has pulled him out of some dark places and shown him sights that he’s never seen before. Of course, Haru can read him like an open book; he helped to _write_  that book.

They know each other. They love each other. Maybe it is that simple.

“Haru,” Rin blurts out, too loud in the echoing room, “I want to say something.”

Haru lets out a distracted _hm?_  against his neck.

“You— you’re so— shit, I don’t know. I can’t even stand to think about you sometimes, you know? It’s too much. That’s why I couldn’t call you before. Every time I would think about talking to you, or hearing your voice, I’d want to drown myself in the pool.”

Haru pulls back just enough to meet his eyes, head tilting to one side. “That sounds… worrying,” he says facetiously.

Rin slams his head back against the locker. “That’s not… what I meant. I’m _trying_  to say— it was harder to call you because— I thought it would hurt too much. I fucking missed you, okay? You mean so much to me. I want to take over the world with you. Do you— do you get what I’m saying?”

“Rin.” Haru sighs the sigh of a long-suffering man. “You can just say that you like me.”

Rin feels himself deflate, one-part pissed off and two-parts really fucking embarrassed. “Fine—I like you,” he says, but the words feel too small, too plain, to convey the magnitude of what he feels.

But Haru is a simple guy. His mouth twitches, then smooths into a shy smile. “I like you, too. There; was that so hard?”

 _Nothing is ever easy with us_ , Rin laments, red up to the tips of his ears, because his entire life has been one swimming pool after another, but Nanase Haruka is a fucking hurricane.

“Oh,  _fuck_  you, Haru,” Rin says, obnoxious and full-volume to distract from the grin that’s currently trying to split his face in half. He’s embarrassed, but in the best possible way that he has ever been embarrassed. “Are you seriously making fun of me right now? After my very serious confession? Because that’s low, even for y—”

“Rin. Just kiss me already,” Haru interrupts, impatient and demanding as ever. Rin stutters at the sensation of warm, calloused fingers sliding up to cup his jaw, of knuckles bumping against the collar of his jacket, and presses whatever nameless, blushing feelings he has left to Haru’s mouth. He feels the whorl of a fingerprint caress his bottom lip, and thinks, _I’m so fucking soft for him_ , because Haru always tries so hard to smooth out all of his sharp edges. And if that isn’t romantic, then Rin doesn’t know what is.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a Tumblr: @bartycrouchjrs.


End file.
